This is a great opportunity to remember how much we rely on a steady stream of electricity, and impact it has on the world. Unlike an unplanned power failure, this gives you a chance to run around the house and turn stuff off, especially computers and the like, and sit in the dark together with your friends and/or family. It is quite fun and eye-opening, literally. I have also simply hit the main breaker for the house at 8:30 and left it off until midnight. (This has the added benefit of resetting any powered clocks to midnight automatically.) I challenge everyone to do this, at least for the one hour.

The efforts are going on around the world, so here are the efforts down under:

• Australia: http://earthhour.org.au
• New Zealand: http://www.wwf.org.nz/earth_hour/

Here’s the blurb from wwf:

Hundreds of millions of people, businesses and governments around the world unite each year to support the largest grassroots environmental event in history – Earth Hour. Earth Hour asks individuals, businesses and governments around the world to turn off their lights for one hour to support urgent action on climate change.

This year, Earth Hour is happening on:

Saturday, March 23
8:30pm – 9:30pm
(wherever you are)

 

 

 

 

 

Earth Hour is a highly visible symbolic act. One that brings people of all ages and backgrounds around the world together to sound a clear call-to-action for our most pressing global challenge: climate change. Turning off lights for one hour won’t solve climate change. But the strong message generated by people across every continent turning off their lights together helps create the political space and demand for the large-scale change that will.

All we ask you to do is switch off your lights from 8:30pm – 9:30pm on Saturday, March 23 (local time, wherever you are). But until then, we have more ways for you to show your team spirit during Earth Hour and beyond:

• Download a Team Earth Hour poster  to help spread the word in your city, school, university or office.
• Check out our exclusive Team Earth Hour Playbooks filled with fun ways to celebrate Earth Hour and fight climate change all year round.